


No Good Boys Go

by Shenanigans



Category: DCU (Comics), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Western, Bar Fight, Gen, Hanging, Non-Graphic Violence, definitely meant to be read as preslash, doodle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-25
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-16 07:22:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29697060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shenanigans/pseuds/Shenanigans
Summary: Jason stole money. Roy stole his breath.
Relationships: Roy Harper & Jason Todd
Comments: 2
Kudos: 18





	No Good Boys Go

**Author's Note:**

> there are things that get written directly at my friends when I have a moment- this is one of them. Quote is from Brigadoon.

"What're you readin', Jaybird?" Roy drawled, husky thumping accent slipping light around the small crackle of fire. He was sprawled back against the leather of his saddle, boots caught against the edge of the blanket and digging into the pale dry dirt. Jason didn't have to look up to know that the sudden pop and crackle of embers would dance and linger before dying just as quickly against the endless dark of the night sky. The wind break of cottonwoods rustled, marking the slow creep of a creek dried in the long summer days. His back was against the hump of a large boulder brought down from the scuff of the hills just at the edge of the horizon.

"Ain't readin' to you, Harper," he muttered in answer, thumbing to the next page.

Their horses cropped at the long trail of grass that wept over where the creek bed cracked, yanking and huffing at the edge of the firelight. He kept his mottled mare tethered to Roy's high strung roan. The gelding would shake his red mane and set the long line of his jaw over the white withers and huff at them. Roy's horse did about as well with boredom as he did. "But you make it all sound so pretty."

Roy was watching him, the feel of his muddy red-brown eyes heavy as the freckles that covered him from the top of his forehead to the tops of his feet, thicker over his nose and brow, matted over the back of his hands and stretching to connect over his shoulders in mottled cinnamon colored swaths. His hair was burned blonde at the tips, but still curling red and hot as flame where it was caught back by the thin leather strap. Jason didn't tell him he liked when it was down and blustering around his face, softening the sharp lines of his face, the blade of his nose and the square of his jaw. He didn't tell Roy much, content to watch the shape of his smile stretch the freckle on his bottom lip and twist with the crooked catch of his canine. 

"I said no."

"Ain't gonna beg," Roy went from prone to motion like applause, stunning and expansive.

Jason rolled into the weight of Roy's attack, letting go of the book to keep it from breaking more, the spine cracked from use. He read books in one large gulp before settling in to slower rereads, nibbling and sipping at the world of words. He savored them until he could find his next feast. 

Roy smelled like leather, crushed green sweet grass, and sweat. Jason was sure for one bright moment that he was supposed to want something floral and dainty, something blue colored and fragile, but couldn't help but flush hot, vivid and aware of the weight against him. He snarled by rote, reaching for his book as Roy laughed and wrestled it away with a delighted happy sound. It burned, snapping through Jason like the startle of a log cracking under heat. He badgered into it, rolling over in the dirt and pinning Roy to the earth, stretched over him and panting as Roy smiled that secret smile, the one that promised him something he didn't quite know how to take.

Jason stole money. Roy stole his breath.

Roy wet his lips in the firelight and Jason's eyes snapped to the book and then to him. He wanted his hair to bluster and blunder over his face, wanted to have a reason to reach and stroke it back from his mouth, his eyes, his skin. 

"C'mon, Jaybird. Just a li'l somethin'."

"Thought you weren't beggin'," he managed, voice dipping into his chest at the way Roy's stomach tightened when he spoke. The trees shivered. Jason understood how breath and wind both made things shake. 

There was intention here, strung taut between them and Roy stretched under him like he was feeling Jason's weight and Jason heard himself speak over the soft little noise Roy exhaled.

" _May be we are not such fools as we look. But though we be, we are well content, so long as we may be two fools together._ "

"Shit." Roy's eyes were wide in the dark, lashes gold and pale. Jason reached and Roy shifted the book just past his fingers. Roy's wrist was warm under his palm. "Shit, _Jay_. That's fuckin’ beau-."

"Roy?" Jason Todd wasn’t important in the grand scheme of things. He wasn’t so proud to think he was. Time didn't stop when Jason died. It didn't stop now. 

It did stretch, lazy as a cat in sun, to prick sharp and aware down the line of Jason's spine. He could feel the press of Roy's hips, the hard line of his thigh, the flex of his ribs through the thin cotton of his shirt. He was touching the divot just under Roy's bottom lip like benediction. 

Roy didn't move. He didn't lift a hand to pull Jason closer, simply went loose and soft as his mouth dropped on another tempting sigh. Roy was a gamble, a gangle of freckled pale limbs and contradictions in a messy red mouth that somehow matched his messy red hair. 

"That was beautiful, Jaybird. Sounds like us, huh?"

Roy always upped the stakes, upped the ante, and Jason was always left to try and keep him alive.

*

The last man fell as he ran, hitched forward in a sprawl of arms and inelegant in death. Jason didn't care. He was used to battlefields, the bombastic breadth of war. It echoed in screams in his dreams. In this lazy afternoon light that filtered through the cottonwoods, this was a little rhyming couplet of pain, already forgotten.

He was here for one thing.

"Little help here?" Roy Harper wheezed, knuckles white around the noose as he kicked to swing closer to the trunk of the grand old oak that he'd been hanged on. Jason followed the rope from his neck, over the limb and behind the trunk as he holstered his pistols. Roy continued the mad scramble, kicking and twisting wildly. The limb creaked; the rope creaked. Roy matched in choking desperate noises.

The Mississippi flowed five miles East, taking the last of civilization down to the delta and the hotbed of sin that cavorted out of the swamplands with a french accent and remnants of southern wealth. 

The clearing still smelled like gun smoke and bourbon. A neat set of bodies piled to the right of the boot trampled tree base. Jason frowned, hooking the edge of his knife and cutting the rope. Roy fell in a graceless heap, red faced and barely recognizable under the swollen mess of his face and the deep bruises blooming along his side.

"We're even," Jason growled, sniffing lightly as Roy had flopped onto his back. The redhead twisted over the mess of his bound wrists and stringy blood clotted curls from the head wound.

"That so?" Roy smiled at him, teeth pink.

Jason hadn't noticed the shiny mottled scar tissue yet. He hadn't learned the shape of him by watching the easy sway of his hips in the saddle seat. He hadn't noticed the way the fingers of his right hand had burned and fused together, hooked to pull a bowstring by fate. He'd just known he owed a debt.

He spat to the side, scuffing his hat against his thigh before shoving his bangs back under the brim and settling it with a practiced hand. He nodded, ambling through the dropped gear and a few limbs tossed absently in death. He flipped a wrist with the toe of his boot to slap onto the fat man's belly and stopped where Roy was watching him through the thin slit of one good eye. He lifted the knife and grabbed Roy by the shoulder, tipping him onto his side. He ignored the soft pained whine and sliced the binding at his wrists. 

“Do I even want to know?” He lifted the knife and grabbed Roy by the shoulder, tipping him onto his side. He ignored the soft pained whine and sliced the binding at his wrists. 

“Was just runnin’ on high hopes until they raised the price of dreamin’ to more’n I could pay.” Roy rolled onto his back again, eyes closed and rubbed at his wrists.

“You cheated.”

“Countin’ cards ain’t cheatin’. Just means you’re smarter.” Roy touched his own face with gentle fingers. “Good thing I was already ugly. Damn.”

Jason couldn't look away, honestly hadn't been able to since an arrow pinned a man to the wall during a bar fight three weeks prior. 

He'd ducked the chair, brawling forward and noted the archer had another nocked and pulled to watch his back.

The saloon’s patrons groaned, scattered around him on the floor in the aftermath and Roy's breath had smelled like whiskey, had felt like want. Jason had asked why and Roy's answer had been simple.

"Didn't seem fair."

“Ain’t shit in this life that’s fair,” Jason had snarled, hunched over a tumbler of bourbon and trying to settle the rage in his veins.

Roy had laughed like he wasn’t afraid and leaned back on the bar top next to him. “I’ll remember to let them shoot you next time.”

“Won’t be a next time.”

“A’ight then.”

Life had a way of making a liar of him.

**Author's Note:**

> I have a [tumblr](https://irolltwenties.tumblr.com/) if y'all wanna come keep me company.


End file.
